Tag: S. Kelley Harrell

Sowilo – Sun – How telling that we draw the Rune of light as the North embarks upon the Dark Time, and the South emerges back into light. Apart from initial dips of seasonal change, we’re also nearing the next Mercury retrograde, which astrologer, Gary Caton, refers to as our opportunity to make the unconscious conscious. It is perhaps this nuance of Sowilo that most benefits us, now.

Traditionally, this Rune reminds us, not just of the sun, but the power beyond it. As we marvel at the sun’s abilities to inspire life on Earth, we draw light from it so that we can shine on others. Such is the connection of All Things, as well as our collective purpose.

Light is, of course, not without shadow. In mere blinding rays, how well do we really see? What depth, subtlety, or even meaning is available to us under intense glare?

The same can be said of awareness. Often what we most seek to know is least knowable. For now, what we most need to realize about ourselves won’t be in the details, the lists, the planning, and perhaps not even in intuition. Rather, it comes from a spark of insight, a fleeting flash that hints a need to go deeper not where our hallows are well lit, but into our unique darkness.

At this time, it is counter-intuition that best informs. Looking directly into the sun blinds us to what most needs to be seen. Indeed, enjoy the light. Celebrate its ability to dazzle the shadows of our lives, then carry the power of the light into the darkness. What we find there leads to our real power.

Check the places where you have allowed your intuition become rote. Truth rarely informs from what we think we know, but from what we’d never imagined.

Uruz – Auroch – Anytime the wild things show up, it’s about to go big. An initiation is upon us. When we encounter this Rune, we are not only engaging base primal forces, we embody them.

Part of the mystery and responsibility of being human–soul in form–is realizing our power. New Age culture has put great emphasis on honoring the soul, somewhat the mind, though significantly less the sacred nature of the body.

In reality, because we are in bodies, we have the greatest possibility to create impact as a soul. After all, we chose to come here. We chose to engage in this frustrating, amazing, beautiful, intense way, and that creative tension is no better presented than in Uruz. We can circle personal life purpose from every direction, probe it from all vantage points, and core truth will always be the same, every incarnation, every being, every path: we exist to create ourselves as we truly want to be.

The work is only in figuring out who, perhaps what, that is. Therein lies our greatest responsibility.

How we imagine ourselves determines perhaps everything we do. What we do impacts everything, every thing. Such is the truth of animism, karma, the Law of Attraction, All Things. This is the level of power of Uruz.

Give deep consideration to how you create yourself this week. Are you who you want to be? What are your other options? Are the obstacles to being who you want to be limitations of your own imagination, or are they fear that the people around you won’t permit you to change? Whatever challenge impedes how you manifest yourself, this week universal forces collude to inspire Everything That You Are.

My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.

I’m grateful for health caregivers who listen.

The completion of a few longterm projects is a great sigh of relief/release.

I’m grateful for my family.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks?

This post is part of VikLit‘s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on… the hop, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment.

Nauthiz – Need – Anytime this Rune comes up in a cast, I think it’s appropriate to examine where we are standing in our own way. We interpret it commonly as need, though Nauthiz provokes thought of what holds us back, what little irritation do we complain and fret over, yet we cling to for some unconscious reason. What we say we don’t want is often the one thing we refuse to change. In that light, this Rune becomes more about constraint, what holds us back.

Nauthiz is related to the youngest of the Norns, Skuld, who is the keeper of what “should” be, which many interpret as the future. However, wordsmiths among us recognize ‘should’ as a modal auxiliary, indicating that outcomes manifest based on conditions met. In other words, we can set the dominoes up any way we like, and based on our knowledge, skill, and perhaps wisdom, they should fall the way we’ve planned. Yet there are always variables we can’t foresee. The dominoes will fall the way they fall, and we have only to react in the best way that we can.

Keep this relationship between need and fate in mind this week. So often what we think we need is connected to what we think should happen, what we should get. The appearance of Nauthiz isn’t suggesting that we will or won’t meet our need, but that we be positively certain we can handle what comes. By that I mean, this Rune carries the ability to assist us in finding peace, regardless.

When we meet resistance in fulfilling our needs, do we respond compulsively just to make the tension stop? Do we buckle down and address the core issue? Do we risk the reality of learning that our needs are really wants? How we deal with this kind of stress is the heart of Nauthiz, as in learning to move through that stress, the need is either released or met.

Hold Self carefully this week. Test the confines in the places of strongest resistance and be honest about who’s really holding the reins.

My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.

I’m grateful for the great sessions this week.

Happy to work out some new offerings through my shamanic work.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks?

This post is part of VikLit‘s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on… the hop, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment.

Perthro – chance – Most people ascribe the meaning “luck” to Perthro, though I find that our modern definition of luck doesn’t come close to describing Perthro’s meaning. Most often when you hear someone discuss luck, the common understanding of it is a random force that may work to our advantage, or send us packing. However, an older understanding of luck falls more along the lines of a system, a force that ebbs and flows, and our ability to be in touch with that system and know how to read it determines our success or failure. Very different perspective, which is why I assert Perthro more along the lines of chance, as in ‘opportunity.’

With every potential for gain, our job is to know our limitations as impeccably as we know our strengths. In that light, Perthro speaks of risk, control, and time, all variables with which the human ego struggles. For that reason, we bring our attention to the process.

In ancient Norse terms, that process comprised the role of the Norns. The Norns are the Norse keepers of fate: Urdhr, what has become; Verdhandi, what is becoming; and Skuld, what should become. These influences are how we perceive cause and effect in our lives, how we relate to the process as also being the tool by which we accomplish it. The fact that we can examine past actions, plan every little detail, yet still not know how things will turn out–though be assured that they will turn out some way–is the emphasis. Perthro’s purpose is to make us question, to offer the affirmation of control over the events of our lives, yet remind us there are also other forces at work over which we have no control.

With Perthro, we realize that we have as much control as we do not. What is before us now is the change that is always the same. The riddle we constantly mine for meaning and outcome is the truth we are never sure we know.

With this Rune comes the whisper that what determines luck isn’t the outcome of our efforts, but how we react to the outcome. When we own failure as compassionately as we hold success, perhaps that is how we create luck for later endeavors.

Go into this week knowing that the more connected with All Things we are, the more likely we will identify success in whatever we do, whatever the outcome.

My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.

I’m grateful to be feeling better after several weeks of allergy bleh.

Thrilled with even more wonderful endorsements for Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism.

I’m relieved to gain etheric insight into various physical states of being, that I can engage life force in a deeper way and soothe them.

I’m very happy to have the opportunity to teach more and meet more people!

I’m also pleased that Comments are working on my site now.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks?

This post is part of VikLit‘s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on… the hop, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment.

Kenaz – Torch – A complex Rune, Kenaz, its meaning calls us to examine the flame in our lives. On the surface it seems easy to recognize the places that are lit,particularly when we examine what is most dark. Sometimes even the tiniest flicker blazes bright and illuminating, when we’re surrounded in darkness.

Another layer to this Rune references a ‘boil,’ or more specifically a blemish, that which is inflamed and restrained. The pain of suffering buried hurt is no less a wound, an impediment, than navigating in darkness.

Consider this week what sore spots need to be revealed. Likely a specific concern already flickering on the radar, make the choice to give it voice, listen, and let it be laid bare. There is deep, clear enlightenment here, that can’t be revealed until some measure of light is shone. While it may be challenging to process, it will not overwhelm. One of the hallmarks of Kenaz is small, digestible bits of insight, revealed as needed, as processed. What a wonderful opportunity to take stock, make wanted changes.

This Rune comes now as a courtesy, a memo reminding us to actively participate and craft our paths. It’s a tool, giving us control over our assets, which in this case are the little hurts we otherwise ignore on a day-to-day basis. In willfully yet soulfully excising them, we honor the wound. By shedding light on the causal irritants, we can find meaning in the discomfort and move on. The wound will heal; its wisdom is imparted and applied for new direction.

In the context of this reading, Kenaz is politely saying, “You can make the change, or it will be made for you.”

Thrilled with the amazing endorsements for Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism.

Happy for opportunities to continue to grow, love, and create myself.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks?

This post is part of VikLit‘s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on… the hop, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment.

Dagaz – Day – Down in the easy chair, up go the feet, arms behind to cradle the head. It’s okay to assume the position of a job completed, work well done.

These last few weeks we’ve been in a current of tying up loose ends, making sure we’ve rallied allies, learning when to swim and dive deep at the times that floating along the tide isn’t enough. We’ve done a little happy dance to acknowledge the blessings we’ve attained, the wisdom this cycle has brought us. And now, in Dagaz, that cycle closes, begins a new one.

Dagaz is about cycles, specifically how we are guided through the day. How to prepare for the day ahead? Leap at the sound of the alarm, stumble into the shower and some combination of clothing, somehow managing to show good face for the work ahead? Meticulously lay out the day’s clothing and align all details the night before just so to ease the shift to morning, and greet the chores ahead with a task list and immaculately detailed day planner?

Then comes the summary of the day’s end: what was accomplished and what wasn’t; who did what, where, when, why, and how it affects us; how we feel about all of the above. And guess what? We get to do it all again tomorrow.

That’s how most of us trek into and out of our days. If studies on Dagaz are correct, our ancestor’s day minders weren’t that different from ours. Therein lies its greatest wisdom of the human perception of the sun’s rotation: we did what we did, and learned what we learned, how do we move on?

I sometimes call Dagaz the ‘so what?’ Rune, because that’s its simplest, yet most profound teaching. Certainly a huge task has been completed, and celebrations are in order. So what? Don’t get too emotionally involved in things. Keep the ego in check, and do our best, because in the end, there is no end. Only a chance to do it all, better.